SAFEGUARDING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH ROBOTIC INSPECTION, Opportunities and Challenges

Transcription

1 SAFEGUARDING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH ROBOTIC INSPECTION, Opportunities and Challenges Reliable Non Destructive Testing (NDT) is vital to the integrity, performance management and sustainability of capital assets in safety critical industries such as oil and gas, aerospace, transportation, power generation and off-shore and subsea operations. The talk will explore opportunities to improve the NDT of industrial structures and decrease the cost of inspection by automating the NDT with mobile robots. The challenges of developing mobile wall climbing and submersible robots will be presented that can provide access to test sites on very large vertical structures or structures located in hazardous environments thereby eliminating the large expense of erecting scaffolding or lengthy preparation for rope and platform access before inspection can start. Some of these developments provide the possibility of saving costs by reducing outage times or carrying out the NDT in-service thus preventing expensive outages. The presentation will show climbing and swimming robots developed to detect weld and corrosion defects on ship hulls, floating platforms, mooring chains, petrochemical storage tanks, pressure vessels, concrete structures, wind blades and aircraft wings and fuselage.

2 SAFEGUARDING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH ROBOTIC INSPECTION Opportunities and Challenges Professor Tariq Sattar TWI Chair and Director of LSBIC Granta Park, Great Abington, Cambridge CB21 6AL School of Engineering, LSBU, London, UK. The London South Bank Innovation Centre (LSBIC) for the Automation of NDT Based in Granta Park, Great Abington, Cambridge CB2 6AL Robotics for reliable NDT To ensure the Integrity, performance management and sustainability of capital assets in safety critical industries e.g. Oil and gas Nuclear Aerospace Transportation Power generation Off-shore and subsea operations Civil engineering structures LSBIC performs R&D of Mobile robots to provide access and perform NDT of very large structures test sites located in dangerous and hazardous environments The aim is to reduce inspection costs, outage times during planned outages Provide in-service inspection where possible to eliminate outages Example where Robotic NDT would save time and cost and improve Health & Safety Internal inspection of Gas Boiler in Power Plant 90m tall boiler, tapered at the bottom WALL-CLIMBING ROBOTS FOR NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING DEVELOPED BY LSBIC Expensive access using platforms and scaffolding Climbing NDT robots use different adhesion techniques: LSBIC S VORTEX WALL CLIMBING ROBOTS ANSYS analysis of streamlines and pressures created by VORTEX machines Aim: Increase Payload capability of climbing robot CROCELLS permanent magnets ROBAIR pneumatic suction cups VORTEX Vortex machines Achieved: 4 kg with an A4 sized robot. 1

3 LSBIC S VORTEX MACHINES: Wall climbing robots for NDT, inspection and surveillance on non-ferrous surfaces Top: A4 SIZE ROBOTS WITH 200g PAYLOAD CAPABILITY VOTEXSCAN ROBOT WITH GROUND PENETRATING RADAR TO INSPECT CONCRETE STRUCTURES Robust wall climbing robots with large payload capability use permanent magnet adhesion and fast wheeled motion. Wireless. robot shown here performs phased array ultrasound NDT of vertical & horizontal welds on ship hulls. Bottom: A4 SIZE ROBOTS WITH 4kg PAYLOAD CAPABILITY Climbing Robot Cell for welding and NDT - CROCELLS Team of climbing robots One performs Electric arc welding by profiling seam with a laser system A utility robot follows the welder and carries the wire drum and feeder A tug robot aides the welding robot An NDT robot tracks the welding hot spot and performs weld inspection with phased array ultrasonics Magnetic adhesion climbing robots adapt to surface curvatures (concave or convex) or change surfaces NDT robot adapts to Convex/Concave structures WALL CLIMBING COMPETITION SIRCS - CONCRETE CLIMBER Uses permanent magnet adhesion to attach to reinforcement bars at depths of 40mm PhD study to investigate flux focussing techniques Railect Forward PROJECT Rapid Automated Volumetric Inspection of Railway Welds with Phased Array Techniques INTERNAL INSPECTON OF PETROCHEMICAL STORAGE TANKS LASERSNAKE PROJECT Nuclear decommissioning: Laser cutting of steel structures with snake arm and wall climbing robot 2

4 CLEAN TANKS Diameter 2 to 20 metres, fixed roof. Visual inspection, a few ultrasonic thickness measurements. Crude oil tanks floating roofs, dia metres, carbon steel. Floor thickness of mm, Preparation: 6-9 months.another 3-6 months to clean. ROBTANK PROJECT: Mobile wall climbing robot enters through manholes on the floating or fixed roof of a tank to inspect tank floor and internal walls Drain outlet Welded stud Mapping of floor defects using rotating bulk wave ultrasonic technique Reflection of drain outlet in tank wall Top of tank wall B-Scan line with origin at centre Tank floor weld Visual inspection followed by MFL. UT final method to validate the problem areas. Drain outlet Tank floor weld 27 0 Welded stud on tank floor Corner of tank floor Manual tank floor inspection, underside corrosion defects PROJECT: Sensor Bots for petrochemical tank floor assessment Funding by TWI/NSIRC and LSBU 1.Active buoyancy control to hop robot aorund on the floor of a tank NDT of Mooring chains and flexible risers in off-shore oil and gas production Oil platform with pre-tensioned risers FPSO Tie-back Risers RiserSure project Rapid Integrity Assessment of Flexible Risers for Offshore Oil and Gas Installations Using Gamma ray Radiography Anti-wear Outer layer layer tensile armour Outer sheath Carcass Internal pressure Interlocked sheath pressure armour Backup pressure armour Anti-wear layer Inner layer tensile armour 2. Use Ultrasound NDT to look for floor corrosion 3. Under liquid data communications to localize a Bot and transmit data Risers from oil wells Pipelines from minor fields The floating platform, riser, flow-line and tie-back environment MOORINSPECT PROJECT The FPSO project: INSPECTION OF MOORING CHAINS ON FLOATING PLATFORMS AND FPSO S WITH A CHAIN CLIMBING ROBOT AND ULTRASOUND GUIDED WAVES Swimming and wheeled robot to inspect FPSO s Floating Production & Storage of Oil tanks Scanning Arm mounted on this face Ultrasonic range finders for detecting walls and strengthening plates Two motors, one for wheel motion, the other to change direction of wheel Thrusters Thrusters 3

5 FPSO swimming and floor inspection robot to inspect tank floors and welds on strengthening plates Research: Vessel energy efficiency enhancement using sensing for LNG Storage Containers PhD study using acoustic emission Underwater Weld & Corrosion Inspector for offshore floating structures -uses phased array ultrasound NDT The RIMINI project: Inspection of Nuclear Reactor Pressure Vessel Circumferential and Nozzle welds Current method of inspection uses large robots to do inspection robot transported and assembled on site before immersion in RPV Require large and heavy robots with a central mast costing millions, manual set up time, tying up of polar crane needed for other tasks Drawing of the pipe crawling robot and scanning arm inside a nozzle Upper shell Nozzle weld to shell Nozzle weld to safe end Circumferential weld Lower shell Bottom head Operator Large Robot Track The final RIMINI Inspection robot RIMINI: Nozzle inspection robot NDT of nozzle weld on 45, 860 mm diameter feeder pipe in the primary circuit Wall climber with nozzle crawler and scanning arm Neutrally buoyant climber+ nozzle crawler Positively buoyant climber, parked with suction cups Requires operators to attach scanner arm in a radiation environment. 4

6 The RRNDT project: Ultrasound INSPECTION OF NOZZLE WELDS ON 760mm diameter pipes in the primary circuit of nuclear power plants with a climbing robot Inspection of aircraft wings and fuselage with climbing robots CAD schematic drawing - mobile inspection robot deploying NDT sensors with 7-axis arm. Inspection of rows of rivets on aircraft wings and fuselage with a climbing robot Climbing ring robot for wind turbine tower and pipe inspection ULTRASONIC PHASED ARRAYS to inspect rivets on aircraft, ROBAIR project EDDY CURRENTS inspection of rows of rivets on the wings and fuselage of aircraft, ROBAIR project Thermographic detection of loose rivets The WInspector project: Advanced shearography kit and robotic deployment platform for on-site inspection of wind blades Internal pipe climbing robot The Ring Pipe Climbing Robot 5

7 Eddy Current Inspection of turbine blade with 7 axis, force controlled portable arm Mass of arm: 22 kg Reach: 600 mm Repeatability: 1 mm Adept Controller with force sensor module. Contact force adaptation to uncertain complex surfaces 11 Awards for innovation in industrial robots Public engagement via science and engineering exhibitions Robot Detectives: Sherlock Holmes meets Spiderman Selected for exhibition by the: Royal Society of Science (2011) Royal Academy of Engineering (2012) End 6